In large hydro-turbine machinery in which the main drive shaft is supported by journal bearings, the turbine bearing functions as a stiff bearing because it has been the normal practice of directly connecting it to a massive adjacent head cover which, in turn, is solidly grounded or anchored as being connected to the powerhouse concrete. This arrangement functions satisfactorily as long as the axisymmetric deformation of the bearing support connection to its head cover is not too large. When the axisymmetric deformation becomes too large, as encountered with relatively large hydro-turbine machinery, the bearing support transfers an unacceptable large portion of the radial movement of the adjacent head cover component to the bearing surface causing the bearing clearances to change with different machine operations. Detrimental effects experienced with existing bearing support arrangements include excessive vibration and machine efficiency losses resulting from the requirement that larger seal bearing clearances in shaft system designs accommodate the variable bearing bore diameter.